A Poor Wise Man by Mary Roberts Rinehart

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"Are you sick?" she called, and getting up, her knees hardly holdingher, she lighted the gas at its unshaded bracket on the wall and ranto the other bed.

Edith was lying there, her mouth open, her lips bleached and twisted.Her stertorous breathing filled the room, and over all was the odorof carbolic acid.

"Edith, for God's sake!"

The girl was only partially conscious. Ellen ran down the stairsand into Willy's room.

"Get up," she cried, shaking him. "That girl's killed herself."

"Lily!"

"No, Edith. Carbolic acid."

Even then he remembered her mother.

"Don't let her hear anything, It will kill her," he said, and ranup the stairs. Almost immediately he was down again, searching foralcohol; he found a small quantity and poured that down the swollenthroat. He roused Dan then, and sent him running madly for DoctorSmalley, with a warning to bring him past Mrs. Boyd's door quietly,and to bring an intubation set with him in case her throat shouldclose. Then, on one of his innumerable journeys up and down thestairs he encountered Mrs. Boyd herself, in her nightgown, andterrified.

"What's the matter, Willy?" she asked. "Is it a fire?"

"Edith is sick. I don't want you to go up. It may be contagious.It's her throat."

And from that Mrs. Boyd deduced diphtheria; she sat on the stairsin her nightgown, a shaken helpless figure, asking countlessquestions of those that hurried past. But they reassured her, andafter a time she went downstairs and made a pot of coffee. Ensconcedwith it in the lower hall, and milk bottle in hand, she waylaid themwith it as they hurried up and down.

Upstairs the battle went on. There were times when the paralyzedmuscles almost stopped lifting the chest walls, when each breath wasa new miracle. Her throat was closing fast, too, and at eighto'clock came a brisk young surgeon, and with Willy Cameron'sassistance, an operation was performed. After that, and for days,Edith breathed through a tube in her neck.

The fiction of diphtheria was kept up, and Mrs. Boyd, having achildlike faith in medical men, betrayed no anxiety after the firsthour or two. She saw nothing incongruous in Ellen going downthrough the house while she herself was kept out of that upperroom where Edith lay, conscious now but sullen, disfigured, silent.She was happy, too, to have her old domain hers again, while Ellennursed; to make again her flavorless desserts, her mounds ofrubberlike gelatine, her pies. She brewed broths daily, and whenEdith could swallow she sent up the results of hours of cookingwhich Ellen cooled, skimmed the crust of grease from the top, andheated again over the gas flame.

She never guessed the conspiracy against her.

Between Ellen and Edith there was no real liking. Ellen did herduty, and more; got up at night; was gentle with rather heavyhands; bathed the girl and brushed and braided her long hair. Butthere were hours during that simulated quarantine when a broodingsilence held in the sick-room, and when Ellen, turning suddenly,would find Edith's eyes on her, full of angry distrust. At thosetimes Ellen was glad that Edith could not speak.

For at the end of a few days Ellen knew, and Edith knew she knew.

Edith could not speak. She wrote her wants with a stub of pencil,or made signs. One day she motioned toward a mirror and Ellentook it to her.

"He's all right. They've got a girl at the store to take yourplace, but I guess you can go back if you want to." Then, seeingthe hunger in the girl's eyes: "He's out a good bit these nights.He's making speeches for that Mr. Hendricks. As if he could beelected against Mr. Cardew!"

The confinement told on Ellen. She would sit for hours, wonderingwhat had become of Lily. Had she gone back home? Was she seeingthat other man? Perhaps her valiant loyalty to Lily faded somewhatduring those days, because she began to guess Willy Cameron's secret.If a girl had no eyes in her head, and couldn't see that WillyCameron was the finest gentleman who ever stepped in shoe leather,that girl had something wrong about her.

Then, sometimes, she wondered how Edith's condition was going to bekept from her mother. She had measured Mrs. Boyd's pride by thattime, her almost terrible respectability. She rather hoped that thesick woman would die some night, easily and painlessly in her sleep,because death was easier than some things. She liked Mrs. Boyd; shefelt a slightly contemptuous but real affection for her.

Then one night Edith heard Willy's voice below, and indicated thatshe wanted to see him. He came in, stooping under the sheet whichMrs. Boyd had heard belonged in the doorway of diphtheria, and stoodlooking down at her. His heart ached. He sat down on the bedbeside her and stroked her hand.

"Poor little girl," he said. "We've got to make things very happyfor her, to make up for all this!"

But Edith freed her hand, and reaching out for paper and pencil stub,wrote something and gave it to Ellen.

Ellen read it.

"Tell him."

"I don't want to, Edith. You wait and do it yourself."

But Edith made an insistent gesture, and Ellen, flushed and wretched,had to tell. He made no sign, but sat stroking Edith's hand, onlyhe stared rather fixedly at the wall, conscious that the girl'seyes were watching him for a single gesture of surprise or anger. Hefelt no anger, only a great perplexity and sadness, an older-brothergrief.

"I'm sorry, little sister," he said, and did the kindest thing hecould think of, bent over and kissed her on the forehead. "Of courseI know how you feel, but it is a big thing to bear a child, isn't it?It is the only miracle we have these days."

"A child with no father," said Ellen, stonily.

"Even then," he persisted, "it's a big thing. We would have this onecome under happier circumstances if we could, but we will welcome andtake care of it, anyhow. A child's a child, and mighty valuable.And," he added - "I appreciate your wanting me to know, Edith."

He stayed a little while after that, but he read aloud, choosing ahumorous story and laughing very hard at all the proper places. Inthe end he brought a faint smile to Edith's blistered lips, and asmall lift to the cloud that hung over her now, day and night.

He made a speech that night, and into it he put all of his aching,anxious soul; Edith and Dan and Lily were behind it. Akers andDoyle. It was at a meeting in the hall over the city market, andthe audience a new men's non-partisan association.

"Sometimes," he said, "I am asked what it is that we want, we menwho are standing behind Hendricks as an independent candidate." Hewas supposed to bring Mr. Hendricks' name in as often as possible."I answer that we want honest government, law and order, an end tothis conviction that the country is owned by the unions and thecapitalists, a fair deal for the plain people, which is you and I,my friends. But I answer still further, we want one thing more, agreater thing, and that thing we shall have. All through this greatcountry to-night are groups of men hoping and planning for anincredible thing. They are not great in numbers; they are, however,organized, competent, intelligent and deadly. They plow the landwith discord to sow the seeds of sedition. And the thing they wantis civil war.

"And against them, what? The people like you and me; the men withhomes they love; the men with little businesses they have foughtand labored to secure; the clerks; the preachers; the doctors, thehonest laborers, the God-fearing rich. I tell you, we are thepeople, and it is time we knew our power.

"And this is the thing we want, we the people; the greater thing,the thing we shall have; that this government, this country whichwe love, which has three times been saved at such cost of blood,shall survive."

It was after that speech that he met Pink Denslow for the first time.A square, solidly built young man edged his way through the crowd,and shook hands with him.

"Name's Denslow," said Pink. "Liked what you said. Have you timeto run over to my club with me and have a high-ball and a talk?"

"I've got all the rest of the night."

"Right-o!" said Pink, who had brought back a phrase or two from theBritish.

It was not until they were in the car that Pink said:

"I think you're a friend of Miss Cardew's, aren't you?"

"I know Miss Cardew," said Willy Cameron, guardedly. And they wereboth rather silent for a time.

That night proved to be a significant one for them both, as ithappened. They struck up a curious sort of friendship, based on ahumble admiration on Pink's part, and with Willy Cameron on sheerhunger for the society of his kind. He had been suffering a realmental starvation. He had been constantly giving out and gettingnothing in return.

Pink developed a habit of dropping into the pharmacy when he happenedto be nearby. He was rather wistfully envious of that year in thecamp, when Lily Cardew and Cameron had been together, and at firstit was the bond of Lily that sent him to the shop. In the beginningthe shop irritated him, because it seemed an incongruous backgroundfor the fiery young orator. But later on he joined the small openforum in the back room, and perhaps for the first time in his idleyears he began to think. He had made the sacrifice of his luxuriousyoung life to go to war, had slept in mud and risked his body andbeen hungry and cold and often frightfully homesick. And now itappeared that a lot of madmen were going to try to undo all that hehad helped to do. He was surprised and highly indignant. Even ahandful of agitators, it seemed, could do incredible harm.

One night he and Willy Cameron slipped into a meeting of a RussianSociety, wearing old clothes, which with Willy was not difficult,and shuffling up dirty stairs without molestation. They came awaythoughtful.

"Looks like it's more than talk," Pink said, after a time.

"They're not dangerous," Willy Cameron said. "That's talk. But itshows a state of mind. The real incendiaries don't show their handlike that."

"You think it's real, then?"

"Some boils don't come to a head. But most do."

It was after a mob of foreigners had tried to capture the town ofDonesson, near Pittsburgh, and had been turned back by a hastilyarmed body of its citizens, doctors, lawyers and shop-keepers, thata nebulous plan began to form in Willy Cameron's active mind.

If one could unite the plain people politically, or against a foreignwar, why could they not be united against an enemy at home? TheSouth had had a similar problem, and the result was the Ku Klux Klan.

The Chief of Police was convinced that a plan was being formulatedto repeat the Seattle experiment against the city. The Mayor wasdubious. He was not a strong man; he had a conviction that becausea thing never had happened it never could happen.

"The mob has done it before," urged the Chief of Police one day."They took Paris, and it was damned disagreeable."

The Mayor was a trifle weak in history.

"Maybe they did," he agreed. "But this is different. This isAmerica."

He was rather uneasy after that. It had occurred to him that theChief might have referred to Paris, Illinois.

Now and then Pink coaxed Willy Cameron to his club, and for thoserare occasions he provided always a little group of men likethemselves, young, eager, loyal, and struggling with the newproblems of the day. In this environment Willy Cameron receivedas well as gave.

Most of the men had been in the army, and he found in them an eageranxiety to face the coming situation and combat it. In the end thenucleus of the new Vigilance Committee was formed there.

Not immediately. The idea was of slow growth even with itsoriginator, and it only reached the point of speech when Mr.Hendricks stopped in one day at the pharmacy and brought a bundlewhich he slapped down on the prescription desk.

"Read that dynamite," he said, his face flushed and lowering. "Aman I know got it translated for me. Read it and then tell mewhether I'm an alarmist and a plain fool, or if it means troublearound here."

There was no question in Willy Cameron's mind as to which it meant.

Louis Akers had by that time announced his candidacy for Mayor, andorganized labor was behind him to an alarming extent. When WillyCameron went with Pink to the club that afternoon, he found Akersunder discussion, and he heard some facts about that gentleman'sprivate life which left him silent and morose. Pink knew nothingof Lily's friendship with Akers. Indeed, Pink did not know thatLily was in the city, and Willy Cameron had not undeceived him. Ithad pleased Anthony Cardew to announce in the press that Lily wasmaking a round of visits, and the secret was not his to divulge.But the question which was always in his mind rose again. What didshe see in the man? How could she have thrown away her home and herfamily for a fellow who was so obviously what Pink would have called"a wrong one"?

He roused, however, at a question.

"He may," he said; "with three candidates we're splitting the votethree ways, and it's hard to predict. Mr. Cardew can't be elected,but he weakens Hendricks. One thing's sure. Where's my pipe?"Silence while Mr. Cameron searched for his pipe, and took his owntime to divulge the sure thing. "If Hendricks is elected he'llclear out the entire bunch of anarchists. The present man's afraid.But if Akers can hypnotize labor into voting for him, and he getsit, it will be up to the city to protect itself, for he won't.He'll let them hold their infamous meetings and spread their damnabledoctrine, and - you know what they've tried to do in other places."He explained what he had in mind then, finding them expectant andeager. There ought to be some sort of citizen organization, tosupplement the state and city forces. Nothing spectacular; indeed,the least said about it the better. He harked back then to his ideaof the plain people, with homes to protect.

"That needn't keep you fellows out," he said, with his whimsicalsmile. "But the rank and file will have to constitute the big end.We don't want a lot of busybodies, pussy-footing around with gunsand looking for trouble. We had enough of that during the war. Wewould want some men who would answer a riot call if they were needed.That's all."

He had some of the translations Hendricks had brought him in hispocket, and they circulated around the group.

"Do you think they mean to attack the city?"

"That looks like it, doesn't it? And they are getting that sort ofstuff all the time. There are a hundred thousand of them in thisend of the state."

"Would you make it a secret organization?"

"Yes. I like doing things in the open myself, but you've got tofight a rat in his hole, if he won't come out."

"Would you hold office?" Pink asked.

Willy Cameron smiled.

"I'm a good bit like the boy who dug post holes in the daytime andtook in washing at night to support the family. But I'll work, ifthat's what you mean."

"We'd better have a constitution and all that, don't you think?"Pink asked. "We can draw up a tentative one, and then fix it up atthe first meeting. This is going to be a big thing. It'll golike a fire."

But Willy Cameron overruled that.

"We don't need that sort of stuff," he said, "and if we begin thatwe might as well put it in the newspapers. We want men who cankeep their mouths shut, and who will sign some sort of a cardagreeing to stand by the government and to preserve law and order.Then an office and a filing case, and their addresses, so we canget at them in a hurry if we need them. Get me a piece of paper,somebody."

Then and there, in twenty words, Willy Cameron wrote the nowhistoric oath of the new Vigilance Committee, on the back of an oldenvelope. It was a promise, an agreement rather than an oath.There was a little hush as the paper passed from hand to hand. Nota man there but felt a certain solemnity in the occasion. To preserve the Union and the flag, to fight all sedition, to lovetheir country and support it; the very simplicity of the words wasimpressive. And the mere putting of it into visible formcrystallized their hitherto vague anxieties, pointed to a realenemy and a real danger. Yet, as Willy Cameron pointed out, theymight never be needed.

"Our job," he said, "is only as a last resort. Only for realtrouble. Until the state troops can get here, for instance, andif the constabulary is greatly outnumbered. It's their work upto a certain point. We'll fight if they need us. That's all."

It was very surprising to him to find the enterprise financedimmediately. Pink offered an office in the bank building. Someone agreed to pay a clerk who should belong to the committee. Itwas practical, businesslike, and - done. And, although he hadprotested, he found himself made the head of the organization.

" - without title and without pay," he stipulated. "If you wisha title on me, I'll resign."

He went home that night very exalted and very humble.

CHAPTER XXI

For a time Lily remained hidden in the house on Cardew Way, walkingout after nightfall with Louis occasionally, but shrinkingly keepingto quiet back streets. She had a horror of meeting some one sheknew, of explanations and of gossip. But after a time the desireto see her mother became overwhelming. She took to making littleflying visits home at an hour when her grandfather was certain tobe away, going in a taxicab, and reaching the house somewhatbreathless and excited. She was driven by an impulse toward theold familiar things; she was homesick for them all, for her mother,for Mademoiselle, for her own rooms, for her little toilet table,for her bed and her reading lamp. For the old house itself.

She was still an alien where she was. Elinor Doyle was a perpetualenigma to her; now and then she thought she had penetrated behindthe gentle mask that was Elinor's face, only to find beyond itsomething inscrutable. There was a dead line in Elinor's lifeacross which Lily never stepped. Whatever Elinor's battles were,she fought them alone, and Lily had begun to realize that therewere battles.

The atmosphere of the little house had changed. Sometimes, aftershe had gone to bed, she heard Doyle's voice from the room acrossthe hall, raised angrily. He was nervous and impatient; at timeshe dropped the unctuousness of his manner toward her, and she foundherself looking into a pair of cold blue eyes which terrified her.

The brilliant little dinners had entirely ceased, with her coming.A sort of early summer lethargy had apparently settled on the house.Doyle wrote for hours, shut in the room with the desk; the group ofintellectuals, as he had dubbed them, had dispersed on summervacations. But she discovered that there were other conferencesbeing held in the house, generally late at night.

She learned to know the nights when those meetings were to occur.On those evenings Elinor always made an early move toward bed, andLily would repair to her hot low-ceiled room, to sit in thedarkness by the window and think long, painful thoughts.

That was how she learned of the conferences. She had no curiosityabout them at first. They had something to do with the strike, sheconsidered, and with that her interest died. Strikes were a symptom,and ultimately, through great thinkers like Mr. Doyle, they woulddiscover the cure for the disease that caused them. She was quitecontent to wait for that time.

Then, one night, she went downstairs for a glass of ice water, andfound the lower floor dark, and subdued voices coming from the study.The kitchen door was standing open, and she closed and locked it,placing the key, as was Elinor's custom, in a table drawer. Thedoor was partly glass, and Elinor had a fear of the glass beingbroken and thus the key turned in the lock by some intruder.

On toward morning there came a violent hammering at her bedroomdoor, and Doyle's voice outside, a savage voice that she scarcelyrecognized. When she had thrown on her dressing gown and openedthe door he had instantly caught her by the shoulder, and she borethe imprints of his fingers for days.

"Did you lock the kitchen door?" he demanded, his tones thick withfury.

"Yes. Why not?" She tried to shake off his hand, but failed.

"None of your business why not," he said, and gave her an angryshake. "Hereafter, when you find that door open, you leave it thatway. That's all."

"Take your hands off me!" She was rather like her grandfather atthat moment, and his lost caution came back. He freed her at once and laughed a little.

"Sorry!" he said. "I get a bit emphatic at times. But there aretimes when a locked door becomes a mighty serious matter."

The next day he removed the key from the door, and substituted abolt. Elinor made no protest.

Another night Elinor was taken ill, and Lilly had been forced toknock at the study door and call Doyle. She had an instant'simpression of the room crowded with strange figures. The heavyodors of sweating bodies, of tobacco, and of stale beer came throughthe half-open door and revolted her. And Doyle had refused to goupstairs.

She began to feel that she could not remain there very long. Theatmosphere was variable. It was either cynical or sinister, andshe hated them both. She had a curious feeling, too, that Doyleboth wanted her there and did not want her, and that he was changinghis attitude toward her Aunt Elinor. Sometimes she saw him watchingElinor from under half-closed eyelids.

But she could not fill her days with anxieties and suspicions, andshe turned to Louis Akers as a flower to the open day. He at leastwas what he appeared to be. There was nothing mysterious about him.

He came in daily, big, dominant and demonstrative, filling the housewith his presence, and demanding her in a loud, urgent voice. Hardlyhad the door slammed before he would call:

"Lily! Where are you?"

Sometimes he lifted her off her feet and held her to him.

"You little whiffet!" he would say. "I could crush you to death inmy arms."

Had his wooing all been violent she might have tired sooner, becausethose phases of his passion for her tired her. But there were timeswhen he put her into a chair and sat on the floor at her feet, hishandsome face uplifted to hers in a sort of humble adoration, hisarms across her knees. It was not altogether studied. He was aborn wooer, but he had his hours of humility, of vague aspirations.His insistent body was always greater than his soul, but now andthen, when he was physically weary, he had a spiritual moment.

"I love you, little girl," he would say.

It was in one of those moments that she extracted a promise fromhim. He had been, from his position on the floor, telling herabout the campaign.

"I don't like your running against my father, Louis."

"He couldn't have got it, anyhow. And he doesn't want it. I do,honey. I need it in my business. When the election's over you'regoing to marry me."

She ignored that.

"I don't like the men who come here, Louis. I wish they were notfriends of yours."

"Friends of mine! That bunch?"

"You are always with them."

"I draw a salary for being with them, honey."

"But what do you draw a salary for?" He was immediately on thealert, but her eyes were candid and unsuspicious. "They arestrikers, aren't they?"

"Yes."

"Is it legal business?"

"Partly that."

"Louis, is there going to be a general strike?"

"There may be some bad times coming, honey." He bent his head andkissed her hands, lying motionless in her lap. "I wish you wouldmarry me soon. I want you. I want to keep you safe."

She drew her hands away.

"Safe from what, Louis?"

He sat back and looked up into her face.

"You must remember, dear, that for all your theories, which arevery sweet, this is a man's world, and men have rather brutalmethods of settling their differences."

"And you advocate brutality?"

"Well, the war was brutal, wasn't it? And you were in a white heatsupporting it, weren't you? How about another war," - he chose hiswords carefully - "just as reasonable and just? You've heard Doyle.You know what I mean."

"Not now!"

He was amazed at her horror, a horror that made her recoil from himand push his hands away when he tried to touch her. He got upangrily and stood looking down at her, his hands in his pockets.

"What the devil did you think all this talk meant?" he demanded."You've heard enough of it."

"Does Aunt Elinor know?"

"Of course."

"And she approves?"

"I don't know and I don't care." Suddenly, with one of the quickchanges she knew so well, he caught her hands and drawing her to herfeet, put his arms around her. "All I know is that I love you, andif you say the word I'll cut the whole business."

"You would?"

He amended his offer somewhat.

"Marry me, honey," he begged. "Marry me now. Do you think I'lllet anything in God's world come between us? Marry me, and I'll domore than leave them." He was whispering to her, stroking her hair."I'll cut the whole outfit. And on the day I go into your house asyour husband I'll tell your people some things they want to know.That's a promise."

"What will they do to you?"

"Your people?"

"The others."

He drew himself to his full height, and laughed.

"They'll try to do plenty, old girl," he said, "but I'm not afraid ofthem, and they know it. Marry me, Lily," he urged. "Marry me now.And we'll beat them out, you and I."

He gave her a sense of power, over him and over evil. She feltsuddenly an enormous responsibility, that of a human soul waiting tobe uplifted and led aright.

"You can save me, honey," he whispered, and kneeling suddenly, hekissed the toe of her small shoe.

He was strong. But he was weak too. He needed her. "I'll do it,Louis," she said. "You - you will be good to me, won't you?"

"I'm crazy about you."

The mood of exaltation upheld her through the night, and into thenext day. Elinor eyed her curiously, and with some anxiety. Itwas a long time since she had been a girl, going about star-eyedwith power over a man, but she remembered that lost time well.

At noon Louis came in for a hasty luncheon, and before he left hedrew Lily into the little study and slipped a solitaire diamond onher engagement finger. To Lily the moment was almost a holy one,but he seemed more interested in the quality of the stone and itsappearance on her hand than in its symbolism.

A little of her exaltation died then. But perhaps men were likethat, shyly covering the things they felt deepest.

She was rather surprised when he suggested keeping the engagementa secret.

"Except the Doyles, of course," he said. "I am not taking anychances on losing you, child."

"Not mother?"

"Not unless you want to be kidnaped and taken home. It's only amatter of a day or two, anyhow."

"I want more time than that. A month, anyhow."

And he found her curiously obstinate and determined. She did notquite know herself why she demanded delay, except that she shrankfrom delivering herself into hands that were so tender and mightbe so cruel. It was instinctive, purely.

"A month," she said, and stuck to it.

He was rather sulky when he went away, and he had told her the exactamount he had paid for her ring.

Having forced him to agree to the delay, she found her mood ofexaltation returning. As always, it was when he was not with he that she saw him most clearly, and she saw his real need for her.She had a sense of peace, too, now that at last something wasdecided. Her future, for better or worse, would no longer be thathelpless waiting which had been hers for so long. And out of herhappiness came a desire to do kind things, to pat children on thehead, to give alms to beggars, and - to see Willy Cameron.

She came' downstairs that afternoon, dressed for the street.

"I am going out for a little while, Aunt Nellie," she said, "andwhen I come back I want to tell you something."

"Perhaps. I can guess."

"Perhaps you can."

She was singing to herself as she went out the door.

Elinor went back heavy-hearted to her knitting. It was verydifficult always to sit by and wait. Never to raise a hand. Justto wait and watch." And pray.

Lily was rather surprised, when she reached the Eagle Pharmacy, tofind Pink Denslow coming out. It gave her a little pang, too; helooked so clean and sane and normal, so much a part of her old life.And it hurt her, too, to see him flush with pleasure at the meeting.

"Why, Lily!" he said, and stood there, gazing at her, hat in hand,the sun on his gleaming, carefully brushed hair. He was quiteinarticulate with happiness. "I - when did you get back?"

"I have not been away, Pink. I left home - it's a long story. Iam staying with my aunt, Mrs. Doyle."

"Mrs. Doyle? You are staying there?"

"Why not? My father's sister."

His young face took on a certain sternness.

"If you knew what I suspect about Doyle, Lily, you wouldn't let thesame roof cover you." But he added, rather wistfully, "I wish Imight see you sometimes."

Lily's head had gone up a trifle. Why did her old world always tryto put her in the wrong? She had had to seek sanctuary, and theDoyle house had been the only sanctuary she knew.

"Since you feel as you do, I'm afraid that's impossible. Mr.Doyle's roof is the only roof I have."

"You have a home," he said, sturdily.

"Not now. I left, and my grandfather won't have me back. Youmustn't blame him, Pink. We quarreled and I left. I was as muchresponsible as he was."

For a moment after she turned and disappeared inside the pharmacydoor he stood there, then he put on his hat and strode down thestreet, unhappy and perplexed. If only she had needed him, if shehad not looked so self-possessed and so ever so faintly defiant,as though she dared him to pity her, he would have known what todo. All he needed was to be needed. His open face was full oftrouble. It was unthinkable that Lily should be in that center ofanarchy; more unthinkable that Doyle might have filled her up withall sorts of wild ideas. Women were queer; they liked theories. Aman could have a theory of life and play with it and boast aboutit, but never dream of living up to it. But give one to a woman,and she chewed on it like a dog on a bone. If those Bolshevistshad got hold of Lily - !

The encounter had hurt Lily, too. The fine edge of her exaltationwas gone, and it did not return during her brief talk with WillyCameron. He looked much older and very thin; there were linesaround his eyes she had never seen before, and she hated seeinghim in his present surroundings. But she liked him for his veryunconsciousness of those surroundings. One always had to takeWilly Cameron as he was.

"Do you like it, Willy?" she asked. It had dawned on her, with asort of panic, that there was really very little to talk about. Allthat they had had in common lay far in the past.

"Well, it's my daily bread, and with bread costing what it does, Icling to it like a limpet to a rock."

"But I thought you were studying, so you could do something else."

"I had to give up the night school. But I'll get back to itsometime.

She was lost again. She glanced around the little shop, where onceEdith Boyd had manicured her nails behind the counter, and wherenow a middle-aged woman stood with listless eyes looking out overthe street.

"You still have Jinx, I suppose?"

"Yes. I - "

Lily glanced up as he stopped. She had drawn off her gloves, andhis eyes had fallen on her engagement ring. To Lily there hadalways been a feeling of unreality about his declaration of lovefor her. He had been so restrained, so careful to ask nothing inexchange, so without expectation of return, that she had put it outof her mind as an impulse. She had not dreamed that he could stillcare, after these months of silence. But he had gone quite white.

"I am going to be married, Willy," she said, in a low tone. It isdoubtful if he could have spoken, just then. And as if to add afinishing touch of burlesque to the meeting, a small boy with aswollen jaw came in just then and demanded something to "make itstop hurting."

He welcomed the interruption, she saw. He was very professionalinstantly, and so absorbed for a moment in relieving the child'spain that he could ignore his own.

"Let's see it," he said in a businesslike, slightly strained voice."Better have it out, old chap. But I'll give you something justto ease it up a bit."

Which he proceeded to do. When he came back to Lily he was quitecalm and self-possessed. As he had never thought of dramatizinghimself, nor thought of himself at all, it did not occur to himthat drama requires setting, that tragedy required black velvetrather than tooth-brushes, and that a small boy with an achingtooth was a comedy relief badly introduced.

All he knew was that he had somehow achieved a moment in which tosteady himself, and to find that a man can suffer horribly andstill smile. He did that, very gravely, when he came back to Lily.

"Can you tell me about it?"

"There is not very much to tell. It is Louis Akers."

The middle-aged clerk had disappeared.

"Of course you have thought over what that means, Lily."

"He wants me to marry him. He wants it very much, Willy. And - Iknow you don't like him, but he has changed. Women always thinkthey have changed men, I know. But he is very different."

"I am sure of that," he said, steadily.

There was something childish about her, he thought. Childish andinfinitely touching. He remembered a night at the camp, when someof the troops had departed for over-seas, and he had found her aloneand crying in her hut. "I just can't let them go," she had sobbed."I just can't. Some of them will never come back."

Wasn't there something of that spirit in her now, the feeling thatshe could not let Akers go, lest worse befall him? He did not know.All he knew was that she was more like the Lily Cardew he had knownthen than she had been since her return. And that he worshiped her.

But there was anger in him, too. Anger at Anthony Cardew. Anger atthe Doyles. And a smoldering, bitter anger at Louis Akers, that heshould take the dregs of his life and offer them to her as new wine.That he should dare to link his scheming, plotting days to this girl,so wise and yet so ignorant, so clear-eyed and yet so blind.

"Do they know at home?"

"I am going to tell mother to-day."

"Lily," he said, slowly, "there is one thing you ought to do. Gohome, make your peace there, and get all this on the right footing.Then have him there. You have never seen him in that environment,yet that is the world he will have to live in, if you marry him.See how he fits there."

"What has that got to do with it?"

"Think a minute. Am I quite the same to you here, as I was in thecamp?"

He saw her honest answer in her eyes.

CHAPTER XXII

The new movement was growing rapidly, and with a surprisingcatholicity of range. Already it included lawyers and doctors,chauffeurs, butchers, clergymen, clerks of all sorts, truckgardeners from the surrounding county, railroad employees, andsome of the strikers from the mills, men who had obeyed theirunion order to quit work, but had obeyed it unwillingly; men whoresented bitterly the invasion of the ranks of labor by the lawlesselement which was fomenting trouble.

Dan had joined.

On the day that Lily received her engagement ring from Louis Akers,one of the cards of the new Vigilance Committee was being inspectedwith cynical amusement by two clerks in a certain suite of officesin the Searing Building. They studied it with interest, while theman who had brought it stood by.

"Where'd you pick it up, Cusick?"

"One of our men brought it into the store. Said you might want tosee it."

The three men bent over it.

The Myers Housecleaning Company had a suite of three rooms. Duringthe day two stenographers, both men, sat before machines and made apretense of business at such times as the door opened, or when anoccasional client, seeing the name, came in to inquire for rates.At such times the clerks were politely regretful. The firm'scontracts were all they could handle for months ahead.

There was a constant ebb and flow of men in the office, presumablyprofessional cleaners. They came and went, or sat along the walls,waiting. A large percentage were foreigners but the clerks provedto be accomplished linguists. They talked, with more or lessfluency, with Croats, Serbs, Poles and Slavs.

There was a supply room off the office, a room filled with pailsand brushes, soap and ladders. But there was a great safe also,and its compartments were filled with pamphlets in many tongues,a supply constantly depleted and yet never diminishing. Workmen,carrying out the pails of honest labor, carried them loaded downwith the literature it was their only business to circulate.

Thus, openly, and yet with infinite caution, was spread the doctrineof no God; of no government, and of no church; of the confiscationof private property; of strikes and unrest; of revolution, rape,arson and pillage.

And around this social cancer the city worked and played. Itstheatres were crowded, its expensive shops, its hotels. Two classesof people were spending money prodigally; women with shawls overtheir heads, women who in all their peasant lives had never owned ahat, drove in automobiles to order their winter supply of coal, andvast amounts of liquors were being bought by the foreign elementagainst the approaching prohibition law, and stored in untidycellars.

On the other hand, the social life of the city was gay with reactionfrom war. The newspapers were filled with the summer plans of thewealthy, and with predictions of lavish entertaining in the fall.Among the list of debutantes Lily's name always appeared.

And, in between the upper and the nether millstone, were beingground the professional and salaried men with families, the womenclerks, the vast army who asked nothing but the right to work andlive. They went through their days doggedly, with little anxiouslines around their eyes, suffering a thousand small deprivations,bewildered, tortured with apprehension of to-morrow, and yetpatiently believing that, as things could not be worse, they mustsoon commence to improve.

"It's bound to clear up soon," said Joe Wilkinson over the backfence one night late in June, to Willy Cameron. Joe supported alarge family of younger brothers and sisters in the house nextdoor, and was employed in a department store. "I figure it thisway - both sides need each other, don't they? Something likemarriage, you know. It'll all be over in six months. Only I'mthanking heaven just now it's summer, because our kids are hellon shoes."

"I hope so," said Willy Cameron. "What are you doing over there,anyhow?"

"Wait and see," said Joe, cryptically. "If you think you're goingto be the only Central Park in this vicinity you've got to thinkagain." He hesitated and glanced around, but the small Wilkinsonswere searching for worms in the overturned garden mold. "How'sEdith?" he asked.

"She's all right, Joe."

"Seeing anybody yet?"

"Not yet. In a day or so she'll be downstairs."

"You might tell her I've been asking about her."

There was something in Joel's voice that caught Willy Cameron'sattention. He thought about Joe a great deal that night. Joe wasanother one who must never know about Edith's trouble. The boyhad little enough, and if he had built a dream about Edith Boyd hemust keep his dream. He was rather discouraged that night, wasWilly Cameron, and he began to think that dreams were the bestthings in life. They were a sort of sanctuary to which one fledto escape realities. Perhaps no reality was ever as beautiful asone's dream of it.

Lily had passed very definitely out of his life. Sometimes duringhis rare leisure he walked to Cardew Way through the warm night,and past the Doyle house, but he never saw her, and because it didnot occur to him that she might want to see him he never made anattempt to call. Always after those futile excursions he wasinclined to long silences, and only Jinx could have told how manyhours he sat in his room at night, in the second-hand easy chair hehad bought, pipe in hand and eyes on nothing in particular, lost ina dream world where the fields bore a strong resemblance to theparade ground of an army camp, and through which field he and Lilywandered like children, hand in hand.

But he had many things to think of. So grave were the immediateproblems, of food and rent, of Mrs. Boyd and Edith, that a littleof his fine frenzy as to the lurking danger of revolution departedfrom him. The meetings in the back room at the pharmacy took ona political bearing, and Hendricks was generally the central figure.The ward felt that Mr. Hendricks was already elected, and calledhim "Mr. Mayor." At the same time the steel strike pursued a courseof comparative calm. At Friendship and at Baxter there had beenrioting, and a fatality or two, but the state constabulary had thesituation well in hand. On a Sunday morning Willy Cameron went outto Baxter on the trolley, and came home greatly comforted. Thecool-eyed efficiency of the state police reassured him. He comparedthem, disciplined, steady, calm with the calmness of their dangerouscalling, with the rabble of foreigners who shuffled along thesidewalks, and he felt that his anxiety had been rather absurd.

He was still making speeches, and now and then his name was mentionedin the newspapers. Mrs. Boyd, now mostly confined to her room, spentmuch time in searching for these notices, and then in painfullycutting them out and pasting them in a book. On those days whenthere was nothing about him she felt thwarted, and was liable tosharp remarks on newspapers in general, and on those of the city inparticular.

Then, just as he began to feel that the strike would pass off likeother strikes, and that Doyle and his crowd, having plowed the fieldfor sedition, would find it planted with healthier grain, he had atalk with Edith.

She came downstairs for the first time one Wednesday evening earlyin July, the scars on her face now only faint red blotches, andhe placed her, a blanket over her knees, in the small parlor. Danhad brought her down and had made a real effort to be kind, but hissuspicion of the situation made it difficult for him to dissemble,and soon he went out. Ellen was on the doorstep, and through theopen window came the shrieks of numerous little Wilkinsons wearingout expensive shoe-leather on the brick pavement.

They sat in the dusk together, Edith very quiet, Willy Camerontalking with a sort of determined optimism. After a time herealized that she was not even listening.

"I wish you'd close the window," she said at last. "Those crazyWilkinson kids make such a racket. I want to tell you something."

"All right." He closed the window and stood looking down at her."Are you sure you want me to hear it?" he asked gravely.

"Yes. It is not about myself. I've been reading the newspaperswhile I've been shut away up there, Willy. It kept me fromthinking. And if things are as bad as they say I'd better tellyou, even if I get into trouble doing it. I will, probably.Murder's nothing to them."

"Who are 'them'?"

"You get the police to search the Myers Housecleaning Company, inthe Searing Building."

"I don't know very much. I met somebody there, once or twice, atnight. And I know there's a telephone hidden in the drawer ofthe desk in the back room. I swore not to tell, but that doesn'tmatter now. Tell them to examine the safe, too. I don't knowwhat's in it. Dynamite, maybe."

"What makes you think the company is wrong? A hidden telephone isn't much to go on."

"When a fellow's had a drink or two, he's likely to talk," she saidbriefly, and before that sordid picture Willy Cameron was silent.After a time he said:

"You won't tell me the name of the man you met there?"

"No. Don't ask me, Willy. That's between him and me." He got upand took a restless turn or two about the little rooms Edith'sproblem had begun to obsess him. Not for long would it he possibleto keep her condition from Mrs. Boyd. He was desperately at a lossfor some course topursue.

"Have you ever thought," he said at last, "that this man, whoeverhe is, ought to marry you?"

Edith's face set like a flint.

"I don't want to marry him," she said. "I wouldn't marry him if hewas the last man on earth."

He knew very little of Edith's past. In his own mind he had fixedon Louis Akers, but he could not be sure.

"I won't tell you his name, either," Edith added, shrewishly. Thenher voice softened. "I will tell you this, Willy," she saidwistfully. "I was a good girl until I knew him. I'm not sayingthat to let myself out. It's the truth."

"You're a good girl now," he said gravely.

Some time after he got his hat and came in to tell her he wasgoing out.

"I'll tell what you've told me to Mr. Hendricks," he said. "Andwe may go on and have a talk with the Chief of Police. If you areright it may be important."

After that for an hour or two Edith sat alone, save when Ellen nowand then looked in to see if she was comfortable.

Edith's mind was chaotic. She had spoken on impulse, a good impulseat that. But suppose they trapped Louis Akers in the SearingBuilding?

Ellen went now and then to the Cardew house, and brought back withher the news of the family. At first she had sternly refused totalk about the Cardews to Edith, but the days in the sick room hadbeen long and monotonous, and Edith's jealousy of Lily had takenthe form, when she could talk, of incessant questions.

So Edith knew that Louis Akers had been the cause of Lily's leavinghome, and called her a poor thing in her heart. Quite lately shehad heard that if Lily was not already engaged she probably wouldbe, soon. Now her motives were mixed, and her emotions confused. She had wanted to tell Willy Cameron what she knew, but she wantedLily to marry Louis Akers. She wanted that terribly. Then Lilywould be out of the way, and - Willy was not like Dan; he did notseem to think her forever lost. He had always been thoughtful, butlately he had been very tender with her. Men did strange thingssometimes. He might be willing to forget, after a long time. Shecould board the child out somewhere, if it lived. Sometimes theydidn't live.

But if they arrested Louis, Lily Cardew would fling him aside likean old shoe.

She closed her eyes. That opened a vista of possibilities shewould not face.

She stopped in her mother's room on her slow progress upstairs,moved to sudden pity for the frail life now wearing to its close.If that were life she did not want it, with its drab days andfutile effort, its incessant deprivations, its hands, gnarled withwork that got nowhere, its greatest blessing sleep and forgetfulness.

She wondered why her mother did not want to die, to get away.

"I'll soon be able to look after you a bit, mother," she said fromthe doorway. "How's the pain down your arm?"

Eternity was such a long time. Did she know? Could she know, andstill sit among her pillows, snipping?

"I wonder," said Mrs. Boyd, "did anybody feed Jinx? That Ellen isso saving that she grudges him a bone."

"He looks all right," said Edith, and went on up to bed. Maybe theLord did that for people, when they reached a certain point. MaybeHe took away the fear of death, by showing after years of it thatlife was not so valuable after all. She remembered her own facingof eternity, and her dread of what lay beyond. She had prayed first,because she wanted to have some place on the other side. She hadprayed to be received young and whole and without child. And hermother -

Then she had a flash of intuition. There was something greaterthan life, and that was love. Her mother was upheld by love. Thatwas what the eternal cutting and pasting meant. She was lavishingall the love of her starved days on Willy Cameron; she was facingdeath, because his hand was close by to hold to.

For just a moment, sitting on the edge of her bed, Edith Boyd sawwhat love might be, and might do. She held out both hands in thedarkness, but no strong and friendly clasp caught them close. Ifshe could only have him to cling to, to steady her wavering feetalong the gray path that stretched ahead, years and years of it.Youth. Middle age. Old age.

"I'd only drag him down," she muttered bitterly.

Willy Cameron, meanwhile, had gone to Mr. Hendricks with Edith'sstory, and together late that evening they saw the Chief of Policeat his house. Both Willy Cameron and Mr. Hendricks advocatedputting a watch on the offices of the Myers Housecleaning Companyand thus ultimately getting the heads of the organization. Butthe Chief was unwilling to delay.

"Every day means more of their infernal propaganda," he said, "andif this girl's telling a straight story, the thing to do is to getthe outfit now. Those clerks, for instance - we'll get someinformation out of them. That sort always squeals. They're acheap lot."

"Going to ball it up, of course," Mr. Hendricks said disgustedly,on the way home. "Won't wait, because if Akers gets in he's out,and he wants to make a big strike first. I'll drop in to-morrowevening and tell you what's happened."

He came into the pharmacy the next evening, with a bundle ofred-bound pamphlets under his arm, and a look of disgust on hisface.

"What did I tell you, Cameron?" he demanded, breathing heavily."Yes, they got them all right. Got a safe full of stuff soinflammable that, since I've read some of it, I'm ready to blow upmyself. It's worse than that first lot I showed you. They gotthe two clerks, and a half-dozen foreigners, too. And that's allthey got."

"They won't talk?"

"Talk? Sure they'll talk. They say they're employed by the MyersHousecleaning Company, that they never saw the inside of the vault,and they're squealing louder than two pigs under a gate about falsearrest. They'll have to let them go, son. Here. You can do mosteverything. Can you read Croatian? No? Well, here's somethingin English to cut your wisdom teeth on. Overthrowing the governmentis where these fellows start."

It was intelligent, that propaganda. Willy Cameron thought he sawbehind it Jim Doyle and other men like Doyle, men who knew thediscontents of the world, and would fatten by them; men who,secretly envious of the upper classes and unable to attain to them,would pull all men to their own level, or lower. Men who cloakedtheir own jealousies with the garb of idealism. Intelligent it was,dangerous, and imminent.

The pamphlets spoke of "the day." It was a Prussian phrase. Therevolution was Prussian. And like the Germans, they offered lootas a reward. They appealed to the ugliest passions in the world,to lust and greed and idleness.

At a signal the mass was to arise, overthrow its masters and ruleitself.

Mr. Hendricks stood in the doorway of the pharmacy and stared outat the city he loved.

"Just how far does that sort of stuff go, Cameron?" he asked."Will our people take it up? Is the American nation going crazy?"

"Not a bit of it," said Willy Cameron stoutly." They're about asable to overthrow the government as you are to shove over the SaintElmo Hotel."

"I could do that, with a bomb."

"No, you couldn't. But you could make a fairly sizeable hole init. It's the hole we don't want."

Mr. Hendricks went away, vaguely comforted.

CHAPTER XXIII

To old Anthony the early summer had been full of humiliations, whichhe carried with an increased arrogance of bearing that alienatedeven his own special group at his club.

"Confound the man," said Judge Peterson, holding forth on the golflinks one Sunday morning while Anthony Cardew, hectic with rage,searched for a lost ball and refused to drop another. "He'll holdus up all morning, for that ball, just as he tries to hold up allprogress." He lowered his voice. "What's happened to thegranddaughter, anyhow?"

Senator Lovell lighted a cigarette.

"Turned Bolshevist," he said, briefly.

The Judge gazed at him.

"That's a pretty serious indictment, isn't it?"

"Well, that's what I hear. She's living in Jim Doyle's house. Iguess that's the answer. Hey, Cardew! D'you want these young cubsbehind us to play through, or are you going to show some sense andcome on?"

Howard, fighting his father tooth and nail, was compelled to areluctant admiration of his courage. But there was no cordialitybetween them. They were in accord again, as to the strike,although from different angles. Both of them knew that they werefighting for very life; both of them felt that the strikers'demands meant the end of industry, meant that the man who riskedmoney in a business would eventually cease to control that business,although if losses came it would be he, and not the workmen, whobore them. Howard had gone as far as he could in concessions, andthe result was only the demand for more. The Cardews, father andson, stood now together, their backs against a wall, and foughtdoggedly.

But only anxiety held them together.

His father was now backing Howard's campaign for the mayoralty,but he was rather late with his support, and in private he retainedhis cynical attitude. He had not come over at all until he learnedthat Louis Akers was an opposition candidate. At that his wrathknew no bounds and the next day he presented a large check to thecampaign committee.

Mr. Hendricks, hearing of it, was moved to a dry chuckle.

"Can't you hear him?" he demanded. "He'd stalk into headquartersas important as an office boy who's been sent to the bank for money,and he'd slam down his check and say just two words."

"Which would be?" inquired Willy Cameron.

"'Buy 'em'," quoted Mr. Hendricks. "The old boy doesn't know thatthings have changed since the 80's. This city has changed, my lad.It's voting now the way it thinks, right or wrong. That's why theseforeign language papers can play the devil with us. The onlyknowledge the poor wretches have got of us is what they're given toread. And most of it stinks of sedition. Queer thing, thisthinking. A fellow can think himself into murder."

The strike was going along quietly enough. There had been riotingthrough the country, but not of any great significance. It was inreality a sort of trench warfare, with each side dug in and waitingfor the other to show himself in the open. The representatives ofthe press, gathered in the various steel cities, with automobilesarranged for to take them quickly to any disturbance that mightdevelop, found themselves with little news for the telegraph, andtime hung heavy on their hands.

On an evening in July, Howard found Grace dressing for dinner, andrealized with a shock that she was looking thin and much older. Hekissed her and then held her off and looked at her.

"No. Not that. It only touches her indirectly. But she can't staythere. Even Elinor - " he checked himself. "I'll tell you afterdinner."

Dinner was very silent, although Anthony delivered himself of onespeech rather at length.

"So far as I can make out, Howard," he said, "this man Hendricks isgetting pretty strong. He has a young fellow talking for him whogets over pretty well. It's my judgment that Hendricks had betterbe bought off. He goes around shouting that he's a plain man,after the support of the plain people. Although I'm damned if Iknow what he means by that."

Anthony Cardew was no longer comfortable in his own house. Heplaced the blame for it on Lily, and spent as many evenings awayfrom home as possible. He considered that life was using him ratherbadly. Tied to the city in summer by a strike, his granddaughteropenly gone over to his enemy, his own son, so long his tool andhis creature, merely staying in his house to handle him, an incometax law that sent him to his lawyers with new protests almost daily!A man was no longer master even in his own home. His employeeswould not work for him, his family disobeyed him, his governmentheld him up and shook him. In the good old days -

"I'm going out," he said, as he rose from the table. "Grace, thatchef is worse than the last. You'd better send him off."

"I can't get any one else. I have tried for weeks. There are noservants anywhere."

"Try New York."

"I have tried - it is useless."

No cooks, either. No servants. Even Anthony recognized that, withthe exception of Grayson, the servants in his house were vaguelyhostile to the family. They gave grudging service, worked shorthours, and, the only class of labor to which the high cost of foodwas a negligible matter, demanded wages he considered immoral.

"I don't know what the world's coming to," he snarled. "Well, I'moff. Thank God, there are still clubs for a man to go to."

"I want to have a talk with you, father."

"I don't want to talk."

"You needn't. I want you to listen, and I want Grace to hear, too."

In the end he went unwillingly into the library, and when Graysonhad brought liqueurs and coffee and had gone, Howard drew the cardfrom his pocket.

"I met young Denslow to-day," he said. "He came in to see me. Asa matter of fact, I signed a card he had brought along, and I broughtone for you, sir. Shall I read it?"

"You evidently intend to."

Howard read the card slowly. Its very simplicity was impressive, asimpressive as it had been when Willy Cameron scrawled the words onthe back of an old envelope. Anthony listened.

"Just what does that mean?"

"That the men behind this movement believe that there is going tobe a general strike, with an endeavor to turn it into a revolution.Perhaps only local, but these things have a tendency to spread.Denslow had some literature which referred to an attempt to takeover the city. They have other information, too, all pointing thesame way."

"Strikers?"

"Foreign strikers, with the worst of the native born. Their plansare fairly comprehensive; they mean to dynamite the water works,shut down the gas and electric plants, and cut off all food supplies.Then when they have starved and terrorized us into submission, we'llaccept their terms."

"What terms?"

"Well, the rule of the mob, I suppose. They intend to take overthe banks, for one thing."

"I don't believe it. It's incredible."

"They meant to do it in Seattle."

"And didn't. Don't forget that."

"They may have learned some things from Seattle," Howard saidquietly.

"We have the state troops."

"What about a half dozen similar movements in the state at the sametime? Or rioting in other places, carefully planned to draw thetroops and constabulary away?"

In the end old Anthony was impressed, if not entirely convinced.But he had no faith in the plain people, and said so. "They'll seeproperty destroyed and never lift a hand," he said. "Didn't Istand by in Pittsburgh during the railroad riots, and watch themsmile while the yards burned? Because the railroads meant capitalto them, and they hate capital."

"Precisely," said Howard, "but after twenty-four hours they werefighting like demons to restore law and order. It is" - he fingeredthe card - "to save that twenty-four hours that this organization isbeing formed. It is secret. Did I tell you that? And the ideaoriginated with the young man you spoke about as supporting Hendricks- you met him here once, a friend of Lily's. His name is Cameron - William Wallace Cameron."

Old Anthony remained silent, but the small jagged vein on hisforehead swelled with anger. After a time:

"I suppose Doyle is behind this?" he asked. "It sounds like him."

"That is the supposition. But they have nothing on him yet; he istoo shrewd for that. And that leads to something else. Lily cannotcontinue to stay there."

"I didn't send her there."

"Actually, no. In effect - but we needn't go into that now. Thesituation is very serious. I can imagine that nothing could fitbetter into his plans than to have her there. She gives him acachet of respectability. Do you want that?"

"She is probably one of them now. God knows how much of his rottendoctrine she has absorbed."

Howard flushed, but he kept his temper.

"His theories, possibly. His practice, no. She certainly has noidea ... it has come to this, father. She must have a homesomewhere, and if it cannot be here, Grace and I must make onefor her elsewhere."

Probably Anthony Cardew had never respected Howard more than at thatmoment, or liked him less.

"Both you and Grace are free to make a home where you please."

"We prefer it here, but you must see yourself that things cannot goon as they are. We have waited for you to see that, all three ofus, and now this new situation makes it imperative to take someaction."

"I won't have that fellow Akers coming here."

"He would hardly come, under the circumstances. Besides, herfriendship with him is only a part of her revolt. If she comeshome it will be with the understanding that she does not see himagain."

"Revolt?" said old Anthony, raising his eyebrows.

"That is what it actually was. She found her liberty interfered with,and she staged her own small rebellion. It was very human, I think."

"It was very Cardew," said old Anthony, and smiled faintly. He had,to tell the truth, developed a grudging admiration for hisgranddaughter in the past two months. He saw in her many of his ownqualities, good and bad. And, more than he cared to own, he hadmissed her and the young life she had brought into the quiet house.Most important of all, she was the last of the Cardews. Althoughhis capitulation when it came was curt, he was happier than he hadbeen for weeks.

"Bring her home," he said, "but tell her about Akers. If she saysthat is off, I'll forget the rest."

On her way to her room that night Grace Cardew encounteredMademoiselle, a pale, unhappy Mademoiselle, who seemed to spend hertime mostly in Lily's empty rooms or wandering about corridors.Whenever the three members of the family were together she wouldretire to her own quarters, and there feverishly with her rosarywould pray for a softening of hearts. She did not comprehend theseAmericans, who were so kind to those beneath them and so hard toeach other.

"I wanted to see you, Mademoiselle," Grace said, not very steadily."I have good news for you."

Mademoiselle began to tremble. "She is coming? Lily is coming?"

"Yes. Will you have some fresh flowers put in her rooms in themorning?"

Suddenly Mademoiselle forgot her years of repression, and flingingher arms around Grace's neck she kissed her. Grace held her for amoment, patting her shoulder gently.

"We must try to make her very happy, Mademoiselle. I think thingswill be different now."

Mademoiselle stood back and wiped her eyes.

"But she must be different, too," she said. "She is sweet and good,but she is strong of will, too. The will to do, to achieve, thatis one thing, and very good. But the will to go. one's own way,that is another."

"The young are always headstrong, Mademoiselle."

But, alone later on, her rosary on her knee, Mademoiselle wondered.If youth were the indictment against Lily, was she not still young?It took years, or suffering, or sometimes both, to break the willof youth and chasten its spirit. God grant Lily might not havesuffering.

It was Grace's plan to say nothing to Lily, but to go for her herself,and thus save her the humiliation of coming back alone. All morninghousemaids were busy in Lily's rooms. Rugs were shaken, floors waxedand rubbed, the silver frames and vases in her sitting room polishedto refulgence. And all morning Mademoiselle scolded and ransuspicious fingers into corners, and arranged and re-arranged greatboxes of flowers.

Long before the time she had ordered the car Grace was downstairs,dressed for the street, and clad in cool shining silk, was pacingthe shaded hall. There was a vague air of expectation about theold house. In a room off the pantry the second man was polishingthe buttons of his livery, using a pasteboard card with a hole init to save the fabric beneath. Grayson pottered about in thedrawing room, alert for the parlor maid's sins of omission.

The telephone in the library rang, and Grayson answered it, whileGrace stood in the doorway.

"A message from Miss Lily," he said. "Mrs. Doyle has telephonedthat Miss Lily is on her way here."

Grace was vaguely disappointed. She had wanted to go to Lily withher good news, to bring her home bag and baggage, to lead her intothe house and to say, in effect, that this was home, her home. Shehad felt that they, and not Lily, should take the first step.

She went upstairs, and taking off her hat, smoothed hersoft dark hair. She did not want Lily to see how she hadworried; she eyed herself carefully for lines. Then she wentdown, to more waiting, and for the first time, to a little doubt.

Yet when Lily came all was as it should have been. There was nodoubt about her close embrace of her mother, her happiness atseeing her. She did not remove her gloves, however, and aftershe had put Grace in a chair and perched herself on the arm of it,there was a little pause. Each was preparing to tell something,each hesitated. Because Grace's task was the easier it was shewho spoke first.

"I was about to start over when you telephoned, dear," she said."I - we want you to come home to us again."

There was a queer, strained silence.

"Who wants me?" Lily asked, unsteadily.

"All of us. Your grandfather, too. He expects to find you hereto-night. I can explain to your Aunt Elinor over the telephone,and we can send for your clothes."

Suddenly Lily got up and walked the length of the room. When shecame back her eyes were filled with tears, and her left hand wasbare.

"It nearly kills me to hurt you," she said, "but - what about this?"

She held out her hand.

Grace seemed frozen in her chair. At the sight of her mother'sface Lily flung herself on her knees beside thechair.

"You don't love us. You can't. Not if you are going to marry thatman."

"Mother," Lily begged, desperately, "let me come home. Let me bringhim here. I'll wait, if you'll only do that. He is different; Iknow all that you want to say about his past. He has never had areal chance in all his life. He won't belong at first, but - he'sa man, mother, a strong man. And it's awfully important. He cando so much, if he only will. And he says he will, if I marry him."

Resentment was rising fast in Lily, but she kept it down. "I'lltell you about that later," she said, and slowly got to her feet."Is that all, mother? You won't see him? I can't bring him here?Isn't there any compromise? Won't you meet me half-way?"

"When you say half-way, you mean all the way, Lily."

"I wanted you so," Lily said, drearily, "I need you so just now. Iam going to be married, and I have no one to go to. Aunt Elinordoesn't understand, either. Every way I look I find - I suppose Ican't come back at all, then."

"Your grandfather's condition was that you never see this LouisAkers again."

Lily's resentment left her. Anger was a thing for small matters,trivial affairs. This that was happening, an irrevocable break withher family, was as far beyond anger as it was beyond tears. Shewondered dully if any man were worth all this. Perhaps she knew,sub-consciously, that Louis Akers was not. All her exaltation wasgone, and in its stead was a sort of dogged determination to seethe thing through now, at any cost; to re-make Louis into the manhe could be, to build her own house of life, and having built it,to live in it as best she could.

"That is a condition I cannot fulfill, mother. I am engaged to him."

"Then you love him more than you do any of us, or all of us."

"I don't know. It is different," she said vaguely.

She kissed her mother very tenderly when she went away, but therewas a feeling of finality in them both. Mademoiselle, waiting atthe top of the stairs, heard the door close and could not believeher ears. Grace went upstairs, her face a blank before the servants,and shut herself in her room. And in Lily's boudoir the rosesspread a heavy, funereal sweetness over the empty room.

CHAPTER XXIV

The strike had been carried on with comparatively little disorder.In some cities there had been rioting, but half-hearted and easilycontrolled. Almost without exception it was the foreign andunassimilated element that broke the peace. Alien women spat onthe state police, and flung stones at them. Here and there propertywas destroyed. A few bomb outrages filled the newspapers with greatscare-heads, and sent troops and a small army of secret service menhere and there.

In the American Federation of Labor a stocky little man grimly foughtto oppose the Radical element, which was slowly gaining ground, andat the same time to retain his leadership. The great steel companies,united at last by a common danger and a common fate if they yielded,stood doggedly and courageously together, waiting for a return ofsanity to the world. The world seemed to have gone mad. Everywherein the country production was reduced by the cessation of labor,and as a result the cost of living was mounting.

And every strike lost in the end. Labor had yet to learn that tocease to labor may express a grievance, but that in itself itrighted no wrongs. Rather, it turned that great weapon, publicopinion, without which no movement may succeed, against it. Andthat to stand behind the country in war was not enough. It muststand behind the country in peace.

It had to learn, too, that a chain is only as strong as its weakestlink. The weak link in the labor chain was its Radical element.Rioters were arrested with union cards in their pockets. In vainthe unions protested their lack of sympathy with the unruly element.The vast respectable family of union labor found itself accused ofthe sins of the minority, and lost standing thereby.

At Friendship the unruly element was very strong. For a time itheld its meetings in a hall. When that was closed it resorted tothe open air.

On the fifteenth of July it held an incendiary meeting on theunused polo field, and the next day awakened to the sound of hammers,and to find a high wooden fence, reenforced with barbed wire, beingbuilt around the field, with the state police on guard over thecarpenters. In a few days the fence was finished, only to be partlydemolished the next night, secretly and noiselessly. But no furtherattempts were made to hold meetings there. It was rumored thatmeetings were being secretly held in the woods near the town, butthe rendezvous was not located.

On the restored fence around the polo grounds a Red flag was foundone morning, and two nights later the guard at the padlocked gatewas shot through the heart, from ambush.

Then, about the first of August, out of a clear sky, sporadicriotings began to occur. They seemed to originate without cause,and to end as suddenly as they began. Usually they were in theoutlying districts, but one or two took place in the city itself.The rioters were not all foreign strikers from the mills. Theywere garment workers, hotel waiters, a rabble of the discontentedfrom all trades. The riots were to no end, apparently. They beganwith a chance word, fought their furious way for an hour or so,and ended, leaving a trail of broken heads and torn clothingbehind them.

On toward the end of July one such disturbance grew to considerablesize. The police were badly outnumbered, and a surprising majorityof the rioters were armed, with revolvers, with wooden bludgeons,lengths of pipe and short, wicked iron bars. Things were ratherdesperate until the police found themselves suddenly and mysteriouslyreenforced by a cool-headed number of citizens, led by a tall thinman who limped slightly, and who disposed his heterogeneous supportwith a few words and considerable skill.

The same thin young man, stopping later in an alley way toinvestigate an arm badly bruised by an iron bar, overheard aconversation between two roundsmen, met under a lamppost after thebattle, for comfort and a little conversation.

"Can you beat that, Henry?" said one. "Where the hell'd they comefrom?"

"Search me," said Henry. "D'you see the skinny fellow? Limped,too. D'you notice that? Probably hurt in France. But he hasn'tforgotten how to fight, I'll tell the world."

The outbreaks puzzled the leaders of the Vigilance Committee.Willy Cameron was inclined to regard them as without direction orintention, purely as manifestations of hate, and as such contraryto the plans of their leaders. And Mr. Hendricks, nursing a blackeye at home after the recent outburst, sized up the situationshrewdly.

"You can boil a kettle too hard," he said, "and then the lid popsoff. Doyle and that outfit of his have been burning the fire alittle high, that's all. They'll quit now, because they want toget us off guard later. You and your committee can take a vacation,unless you can set them to electioneering for me. They've hadenough for a while, the devils. They'll wait now for Akers to getin and make things easy for them. Mind my words, boy. That's thegame."

And the game it seemed to be. Small violations of order stilloccurred, but no big ones. To the headquarters in the DenslowBank came an increasing volume of information, to be duly docketedand filed. Some of it was valueless. Now and then there came insomething worth following up. Thus one night Pink and a pickedband, following a vague clew, went in automobiles to the stateborderline, and held up and captured two trucks loaded with whiskeyand destined for Friendship and Baxter. He reported to WillyCameron late that night.

"Smashed it all up and spilled it in the road," he said. "Hurtlike sin to do it, though. Felt like the fellow who shot the lastpassenger pigeon."

But if the situation in the city was that of armed neutrality, inthe Boyd house things were rapidly approaching a climax, and thatthrough Dan. He was on edge, constantly to be placated and watched.The strike was on his nerves; he felt his position keenly, resentedWilly Cameron supporting the family, and had developed a curiousjealousy of his mother's affection for him.

Toward Edith his suspicions had now become certainty, and an openbreak came on an evening when she said that she felt able to go towork again. They were at the table, and Ellen was moving to andfrom the kitchen, carrying in the meal. Her utmost thrift couldnot make it other than scanty, and finally Dan pushed his plateaway.

"Going back to work, are you?" he sneered. "And how long do youthink you'll be able to work?"

"You keep quiet," Edith flared at him. "I'm going to work. That'sall you need to know. I can't sit here and let a man who doesn'tbelong to us provide every bite we eat, if you can." Willy Camerongot up and closed the door, for Mrs. Boyd an uncanny ability tohear much that went on below.

"Now," he said when he came back, "we might as well have this out.Dan has a right to be told, Edith, and he can help us plansomething." He turned to Dan. "It must be kept from your mother,Dan."

"Plan something!" Dan snarled. "I know what to plan, all right.I'll find the - " he broke into foul, furious language, but suddenlyWilly Cameron rose, and there was something threatening in his eyes.

"A lot you'd care," he said, coldly. "As if we didn't have enoughalready! As if you couldn't have married Joe Wilkinson, next door,and been a decent woman. And instead, you're a - "

"Be quiet, Dan," Willy Cameron interrupted him. "That sort of talkdoesn't help any. Edith is right. If you go to Akers there will bea fight. And that's no way to protect her."

"God!" Dan muttered. "With all the men in the world, to choose thatrotten anarchist!"

It was sordid, terribly tragic, the three of them sitting there inthe badly lighted little room around the disordered table, withEllen grimly listening in the doorway, and the odors of cookingstill heavy in the air. Edith sat there, her hands on the table,staring ahead, and recounted her wrongs. She had never had a chance.Home had always been a place to get away from. Nobody had caredwhat became of her. And hadn't she tried to get out of the way?Only they all did their best to make her live. She wished she haddied.

Afterwards Willy Cameron could remember nothing of the scene indetail. He remembered its setting, but of all the argument andquarreling only one thing stood out distinctly, and that wasEdith's acceptance of Dan's accusation. It was Akers, then.And Lily Cardew was going to marry him. Was in love with him.

"Does he know how things are?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yes."

"Does he offer to do anything?"

"Him? He does not. And don't you go to him and try to get him tomarry me. I tell you I'd die first."

He left them there, sitting in the half light, and going out intothe hall picked up his hat. Mrs. Boyd heard him and called to him,and before he went out he ran upstairs to her room. It seemed tohim, as he bent over her, that her lips were bluer than ever, herbreath a little shallower and more difficult. Her untouched suppertray was beside her.

"I wasn't hungry," she explained. "Seems to me, Willy, if you'dlet me go downstairs so I could get some of my own cooking I'd eatbetter. Ellen's all right, but I kind o' crave sweet stuff, andshe don't like making desserts."

"You'll be down before long," he assured her. "And making me pies.Remember those pies you used to bake?"

"You always were a great one for my pies," she said, complacently.

He kissed her when he left. He had always marveled at the strangelack of demonstrativeness in the household, and he knew that shevalued his small tendernesses.

"Now remember," he said, "light out at ten o'clock, and no goingdownstairs in the middle of the night because you smell smoke.When you do, it's my pipe."

"I don't think you hardly ever go to bed, Willy."

"Me? Get too much sleep. I'm getting fat with it."

The stale little joke was never stale with her. He left her smiling,and went down the stairs and out into the street.

He had no plan in his mind except to see Louis Akers, and to findout from him if he could what truth there was in Edith Boyd'saccusation. He believed Edith, but he must have absolute certaintybefore he did anything. Girls in trouble sometimes shielded men.If he could get the facts from Louis Akers - but he had no idea ofwhat he would do then. He couldn't very well tell Lily, but herpeople might do something. Or Mrs. Doyle.

He knew Lily well enough to know that she would far rather die thanmarry Akers, under the circumstances. That her failure to marryLouis Akers would mean anything as to his own relationship with herhe never even considered. All that had been settled long ago, whenshe said she did not love him.

At the Benedict he found that his man had not come home, and for anhour or two he walked the streets. The city seemed less majesticto him than usual; its quiet by-streets were lined with homes, itis true, but those very streets hid also vice and degradation, andugly passions. They sheltered, but also they concealed.

At eleven o'clock he went back to the Benedict, and was told thatMr. Akers had come in.

It was Akers himself who opened the door. Because the night washot he had shed coat and shirt, and his fine torso, bare to theshoulders and at the neck, gleamed in the electric light. WillyCameron had hot seen him since those spring days when he had madehis casual, bold-eyed visits to Edith at the pharmacy, and he hada swift insight into the power this man must have over women. Hehimself was tall; but Akers was taller, fully muscled, his headstrongly set on a neck like a column. But he surmised that theman was soft, out of condition. And he had lost the firstelasticity of youth.

Akers' expression had changed from one of annoyance to watchfulnesswhen he opened the door.

"Well!" he said. "Making a late call, aren't you?"

"What I had to say wouldn't wait."

Akers had, rather unwillingly, thrown the door wide, and he went in.The room was very hot, for a small fire, littered as to its edgeswith papers, burned in the grate. Although he knew that Akers hadguessed the meaning of his visit at once and was on guard, therewas a moment or two when each sparred for an opening.

"Sit down. Have a cigarette?"

"No, thanks." He remained standing.

"Or a high-ball? I still have some fairly good whiskey."

"No. I came to ask you a question, Mr. Akers."

"Well, answering questions is one of the best little things I do."

"You know about Edith Boyd's condition. She says you are responsible.Is that true?"

Louis Akers was not unprepared. Sooner or later he had known thatEdith would tell. But what he had not counted on was that she wouldtell any one who knew Lily. He had felt that her leaving thepharmacy had eliminated that chance. "What do you mean, hercondition?"

"You know. She says she has told you."

"You're pretty thick with her yourself, aren't you?"

"I happen to live at the Boyd house."

He was keeping himself well under control, but Akers saw his handclench, and resorted to other tactics. He was not angry himself,but he was wary now; he considered that life was unnecessarilycomplicated, and that he had a distinct grievance.

Akers was puzzled, suspicious, and yet relieved. He lighted acigarette and over the match stared at the other man's quiet face.

"No!" he said suddenly. "I'm damned if I'll take the responsibility.She knew her way around long before I ever saw her. Ask her. Shecan't lie about it. I can produce other men to prove what I say.I played around with her, but I don't know whose child that is, andI don't believe she does."

"I think you are lying."

"All right. But I can produce the goods."

Willy Cameron went very pale. His hands were clenched again, andAkers eyed him warily.

"None of that," he cautioned. "I don't know what interest you'vegot in this, and I don't give a God-damn. But you'd better nottry any funny business with me."

Willy Cameron smiled. Much the sort of smile he had worn duringthe rioting.